“I will not say so much,” said he; “for once or twice tidings have reached her friends that she was well and happy. The career she had chosen, she well knew would be regarded by her family as a deep degradation; and she only said to one who saw her, 'Tell them that their name shall not be dishonored. As for her who bears it, she deems herself ennobled by the stage!' She was in Italy when last heard of, and in the Italian theatres; and in some of Alfieri's pieces had earned the most triumphant successes. Poor girl! from her very cradle her destiny marked her for misfortune. What a mockery, then, these triumphs if she but recalls the disgrace by which they are purchased!”
CHAPTER XXXVII. THE GLOOMIEST PASSAGE OF ALL
Shall I own that Margot's story affected me in a very different manner from what the good Abbé had intended it should? I could neither sympathize with the outraged pride of the old Marquis, the offended dignity of family, nor with the insulted honor of the sacred vocation she had abandoned. My reflections took a very different form, and turned entirely upon the dangers of the career she had adopted,—perils which, from what I could collect of her character, were extremely likely to assail her. She was young, beautiful, gifted, and ambitious; and, above all, she was friendless. What temptations would not assail her,—by what flatteries would she not be beset! Would she be endowed with strength to resist these? Would the dignity of her ancient descent guard her, or would the enthusiasm for her art protect her? These were questions that I could not solve, or, rather, I solved them in many and different ways. For a long time had she occupied a great share in my heart; sometimes I felt towards her as towards a sister. I thought of the hours we had passed side by side over our books,—now working hard and eagerly, now silent and thoughtful, as some train of ideas would wile us away from study, and leave us forgetful of even each other,—till a chance word, a gesture, a sigh, would recall us, and then, interchanging our confessions,—for such they were,—we turned to our books again. But at other times I thought of her as one dearer still than this,—as of one to win whose praise I would adventure anything; whose chance words lingered in my memory, suggestive of many a hope, and, alas! many a fear. It is no graceful reflection to dwell upon, however truthful, that our first loves are the emanations of our self-esteem. They who first teach us to be heroes to our own hearts are our earliest idols. Ay, and with all the changes and chances of life, they have their altars within us to our latest years. Why should it not be so? What limit ought there to be to our gratitude to those who first suggested noble ambitions, high-soaring thoughts, and hopes of a glorious future,—who instilled in us our first pride of manhood, and made us seem worthy of being loved!
Margot had done all this for me when but a child, and now she was a woman, beautiful and gifted! The fame of her genius was world-wide. Did she still remember me?—had she ever a thought for the long past hours when we walked hand-in-hand together, or sat silently in some summer arbor? I recalled all that she had ever said to me, in consolation of the past, or with hope for the future. I pondered over little incidents, meaningless at the time, but now full of their own strong significance; and I felt at last assured that, when she had spoken to me of ambitious darings and high exploits, she had been less exhorting me than giving utterance to the bursting feelings of her own adventurous spirit.
Her outbreaks of impatience, her scarcely suppressed rebellion against the dull ritual of our village life, her ill-disguised suspicion of priestly influence, now rose before me; and I could see that the flame which had burst forth at last, had been smouldering for many a year within her. I could remember, too, the temper, little short of scorn, in which she saw me devote myself to Jesuit readings, and labor hard at the dry tasks the Sister Ursule had prescribed for me. And yet then all my ambitions were of the highest and noblest. I could have braved any dangers, or met any perils, in the career of a missionary! Labor, endurance, suffering, martyrdom itself, had no terror for me. How was it that this spirit did not touch her heart? Were all her sympathies so bound up with the world that every success was valueless that won no favor with mankind? Had she no test for nobility of soul save in recognition of society? When I tried to answer these questions, I suddenly bethought me of my own shortcomings. Where had this ambition led me,—what were its fruits? Had I really pursued the proud path I once tracked out for myself? or, worse thought again, had it no existence whatever? Were devotion, piety, and single-heartedness nothing but imposition, hypocrisy, and priestcraft? Were the bright examples of missionary enterprise only cheats? were all the narratives of their perilous existence but deception and falsehood? My latter experiences of life had served little to exalt the world in my esteem. I had far more frequently come into contact with corruption than with honesty. My experiences were all those of fraud and treachery,—of such, too, from men that the world reputed as honorable and high-minded. There was but one step more, and that a narrow one, to include the priest in the same category with the layman, and deem them all alike rotten and corrupted. I must acknowledge that the Abbé himself gave no contradiction to this unlucky theory. Artful and designing always, he scrupled at nothing to attain an object, and could employ a casuistry to enforce his views far more creditable to his craft than to his candor. I was no stranger to the arts by which he thought to entrap myself. I saw him condescend to habits and associates the very reverse of those he liked, in the hope of pleasing me; and even when narrating the story of Margot's fall,—for such he called it,—-I saw him watching the impression it produced upon me, and canvassing, as it were, the chances that here at length might possibly be found the long-wished-for means of obtaining influence over me.
“I do not ask of you,” said he, as he concluded, “to see all these things as I see them. You knew them in their days of poverty and downfall; you have seen them the inhabitants of an humble village, leading a life of obscurity and privation,—their very pretension to rank and title a thing to conceal; their ancient blood a subject of scorn and insult. But I remember the Marquis de Nipernois a haughty noble in the haughtiest court of Europe; I have see that very Marquis receiving royalty on the steps of his own château, and have witnessed his days of greatness and grandeur.”
“True,” said I, “but even with due allowance for all this, I cannot regard the matter in the same light that you do. To my eyes, there is no such dignity in the life of a nun, nor any such disgrace in that of an actress.”
I said this purposely in the very strongest terms I could employ, to see how he would reply to it.
“And you are right, Gervois,” said he, laying his hand affectionately on mine. “You are right. Genius and goodness can ennoble any station, and there are few places where such qualities exert such influence as the stage.”